INDIA: SUPREME COURT COMMUTES DEATH PENALTY OF CHHATTISGARH MAN

India's Supreme Court

06 December 2018 :

The Supreme Court on 28 November 2018 commuted the death penalty imposed on a Chhattisgarh man convicted of killing three people and attempting to kill a fourth, saying the question whether the accused was capable of reformation was not considered at the time of trial.“No evidence as to the uncommon nature of the offence or the improbability of reformation or rehabilitation of the appellant has been adduced… Whether the person is capable of reformation and rehabilitation should also be taken into consideration while imposing death penalty,” a bench of Justices Kurian Joseph, Deepak Gupta and Hemant Gupta ruled while commuting appellant Chhannu Lal Verma’s sentence to life imprisonment.The Sessions Judge, Durg, had sentenced Verma to death in June 2013, holding it as a rarest of rare case. The Chhattisgarh High Court confirmed the sentence on April 11, 2014.

Hands off Cain is an international league of citizens and parliamentarians for the abolition of the death penalty in the world. It is a non-profit, non-violent, transnational and trans-national Partito Radicale founded in Brussels in 1993 and recognized in 2005 by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a development co-operation NGO.